Three years to the day since ABC1 was launched, two and a half years since I launched the unofficial abc1uk website, the channel has come to an end with Disney pulling the plug and so with that, the unofficial website has had to close too.

It’s been a good couple of years with the site, with it being the first large scale site I’ve had to manage and deal with, and then a year later after teaming up with Myles, we recoded and redesigned the site to make it into the monster it became!

I’ve had online interviews with stars from ABC1 TV Shows, namely Sabrina Lloyd from Sports Night and Sherri Shepherd from Less Than Perfect, the site gained a whole heap of users and members to it’s forums, and it really did become a mini community with Disney having a look around the site on a regular basis!

Sadly though that is now all over, but there are always some people I would like to thank, namely;

Myles Noton, for to whom if it wasn’t for him the site probably wouldn’t have become so big and rich in features, and thus popular.
John Thackery, for providing hosting and tech support, and being there in times of crisis!
Joyce Rubin at Disney, for patiently providing as much information as she could on news about the channel and shows
The interviewees; Sabrina Lloyd and Sherri Shepherd, and their agents, to take the time to answer a few questions
And finally the visitors who took the time to keep visiting and who joined the community, and stayed with us when things sometimes went bad!

After a couple months of designing, coding, and putting the finishing touches too, the website for Rung Heating I’ve been making is finally complete, and more importantly it’s launched!

Based in Sherborne, Dorest; Rung Heating Supplies Ltd are specialist distributors to the heating, ventilation and air-conditioning industries across the country.

The website features company information, client listings, contact information, and the company’s complete products and services, all coded with fully valid XHTML and CSS through Adobe Dreamweaver, a downloadable company breakdown PDF document and photos and images made through Adobe Photoshop.

View site: www.rungheating.co.uk

It’s the only thing we’ve heard for years, and it’s the only thing we will hear for years, but the London 2012 Olympic games are on their way… and with that, the Olympic Committee decided their old logo needed a bit of a face lift as you can see on the right. Yes. That is the new logo.

Now, you may be thinking – what on earth is that to do with? Well, welcome to the club, from what I can gather not too many people are fond of this new ‘design’ either. From something that looks like the guy in charge of the new logo left it to the last minute, then sneezed all over his drawing and decided to just go with it, it doesn’t quiet yell to me “Olympics” or “Future” as it’s mean’t to, but rather a cheesy looking cover from a 1970’s rock band’s album, which no doubtly flopped.

The design company in charge of this logo was Wolff Olins, who among other things have brought us the current Sony Ericsson brand design, which is much, much better that this new creation, I really don’t know quite what they were thinking, let alone spending £400,000 on it.

Now, after looking at it for a few seconds, you work out that the big pink blobs are actually numbers, saying 2012… with a big square bit plonked in the middle for some reason… Then, someone must have remembered they actually forgot to include ‘London’ or the Olympic logo anywhere, so after some rash decision making, decided on randomly placing ‘London’ at the bottom of the 2, and the the Olympic logo in the middle of the 0.

This new pink catastrophe of a logo is meant to be modern, and represent the future. Well if the future of design is going to be that then god help us. The old design prior to now, shown on the left, in my opinion is much better, and if I had decide which one to use, I wouldn’t have to think twice – it would be the old one hands down, with its much more modern look and feel.

No doubt we’ll have to live with this logo cluttering advertisements, billboards and television for the next five years, even with the lack of support it has received, but it really is poor, a pre-school kid could design something better if they were left alone with a tub of paint and their hands. If this is anything to go by, I really am not looking forward to how we will make a mess of the actual games themselves!